Finding Meaning in Forgotten America

One photographer travels to Trump Country and explores the divisions we don't always even know are there.

Photojournalist Chris Arnade spends his time among those on desolate street corners in the Bronx and in McDonald’s restaurants in Rust Belt towns. But last Monday evening, he traded his usual surroundings for a much different crowd at the American Enterprise Institute in downtown Washington. In a wide-ranging, 90-minute presentation and discussion with AEI’s Katharine D. Stevens, Arnade explained why his photographs—and, more importantly, the stories of their subjects—have become essential to understanding the growing divisions in American society.

It’s no accident that a major Washington institution like AEI has taken an interest in Arnade’s work. The stories of the “forgotten America” that he documents, in inner cities and flyover country alike, present both political parties with uncomfortable and difficult realities. As Arnade, a self-described liberal, charged Monday, “There is no home for the working class. Both parties are run by the Front Row,” a term that he’s coined to describe the divide between educated elites (Front Row) and those he photographs (Back Row). And while Arnade is careful to insist that he would prefer to avoid policy discussions, he acknowledges the increased political import of his work in the wake of the 2016 election. His pursuit of the country’s most devastated areas took him to almost all of what he terms “O-O-T” counties (“Obama-Obama-Trump,” referring to their voting preferences in the last three elections) before President Trump’s triumph last November.

So what is the crux of the Front Row-Back Row division? A quick look at the stories of Arnade’s subjects reveals a vast gulf in how we define that which gives life meaning. Take, for example, our views on getting ahead. The one approved path to success, according to the Front Row, is “leave your town, your family, and get credentials.” American perceptions of success are driven by material, quantifiable metrics: graduate degrees, networking connections, investments, GDP, economic growth, and the like.

For others, like “Rosa,” whom Arnade met in East Los Angeles, competing definitions of meaning prevent them from following the established path to success. Rosa is an aspiring teenager who frequents the neighborhood McDonald’s for its wifi access, a commodity unavailable at home. Despite her desire to travel, her post-high school plans are to attend East LA Community College because, according to her, she “can’t leave.” Rosa is her mother’s translator, and the value that she places on “being there” for her non-English-speaking mother exceeds her desire to travel and attain the credentials that the Front Row values.

Credit: Chris Arnade

Then there’s Andrew, who attends a community college in his hometown of Reno, Nevada.He, like Rosa, opted for the local over the highly regarded for his higher education, not due to a lack of ability—Andrew is a strong student—but because of familial ties. Andrew’s mother is a recovered addict, six years sober, and right now he doesn’t want to leave his family.

The questions that these stories pose get to the heart of America’s divisions. Why should they leave? Isn’t staying to help family more valuable than going to Harvard? While these situations are certainly messier than that simple dichotomy, Andrew’s and Rosa’s choices reveal the insidious ways in which “Front Row” conceptions of meaning have colored our conversations about poverty in America. We have devalued non-economic metrics of success. As Arnade put it, “There are a lot of people who buy into this idea that education is the way out, and I believe it. I’m not saying that’s not right. But they end up $70,000 in debt; they try their best and it doesn’t work. They end up in debt.” Is one who struggles through college in a far-off city, accumulating staggering debt in the process, really more successful than one who forgoes school to instead support a family and community that desperately needs him?

Arnade’s photographs paint a picture of America that is jarringly foreign to those in the Front Row bubble. Our fellow citizens’ experiences in towns and neighborhoods that most of us only view from 30,000 feet or the window of the Acela should serve as a wake-up call to reevaluate the ways in which we define American success. Many of our countrymen hold family, place, faith, and work as far more important than GDP, graduate degrees, LinkedIn connections, and 401Ks. If we are to bridge the ever-widening divide that cuts through our civil discourse, it’s time we in the Front Row recognize, rather than degrade, those who define success differently.

Emile Doak is director of events & outreach at The American Conservative.

“If we are to bridge the ever-widening divide that cuts through our civil discourse, it’s time we in the Front Row recognize, rather than degrade, those who define success differently.”

A few in the “front row” – i.e., the bourgeoisie and upper petite bourgeoisie – will come to this view, but it won’t be enough, it has never been enough. The “back row” – the lower petite bourgeoisie, working class and lumpen proletariat – will have to demand and fight for a re-definition of success, and so much more, or threaten the front row enough to be bought off. The architects of the G.I. Bill have admitted quite openly that it was designed to buy off veterans to keep them from being attracted to communism or fascism, like their World War I counterparts were. In practice, it will have to be the working class that regains its confidence and fighting spirit and leads the way for the back row. Of prime importance will be asserting its political independence from the twin ruling parties of capitalism and their thoroughly unappetizing choice between Obama, Clinton and Cuomo on the one hand and Trump, Bush and Walker on the other.

Chris Arnade has done some amazing work, especially his articles and pictures relating to addiction and its consequences. He has credibility, even with this paleo-conservative.

His series about addition — and now this work — suffers from only one flaw that I can see: he is limited in his ability to untangle structural consequences and personal choices. We all are unable to some extent, and Arnade gets credit for admitting his political leanings up front, as well as his own struggle with alcohol use. Still, his liberal leanings always come down on society harder than the personal decisions of those who chose the use, IMO. Both are in play in his stories.

Here, the sympathetic Rosa and Andrew are trapped not because of their own choices, but because of other people’s — in both cases, their families’ decisions (possible illegal entry into the U.S. coupled with the inability or unwillingness to learn English and substance addiction affecting the second generation).

I’ve just returned to my urban enclave after a holiday spent in a red state, and while I like the Front/Back Row theory (and agree to a large decree), the two stories highlighted here represent no one I saw struggling back home. They’ve tried to play by the “rules,” such as they are, and even without poor decision-making exacerbated by structural flaws that entrap the second and third generations, they are still Back Row. I hope Arnade will take a look at them sometime.

Fran Macadam says:“Most of us” only view the vast swathe of America from “30,000 feet”?

Sheesh. If true, TAC readers may be part of the problem, not the solution.

This is true of most of America. Do you think people living in small town Iowa know much about people living in small town Alabama or that they’re interchangeable? It’s actually first row people who come from back row families that are most conscious of the different worlds since they have lived in both. We are all part of the problem and we all live in bubbles. Saying one type of bubble is better than the other is both wrong and dramatically unhelpful.

The bubble quiz is not takable, at least not in my browser. There was no way to answer the questions (no “Yes” or “No” options visible) and in some cases the full text of the question was not visible.
I do have question its validity based on questions like the one about living on a town of fewer than 50K people that was not part of a metro area. The US has been majority urban (including suburbs) for a century now. It’s the rural population that is in a bubble, not the city/suburb dwellers.

While all this work is important, a quick reading of American history is full of similar stories. Can we read the Grapes of Wrath or our Reconstruction era inner cities were fairly similar to Victorian Dickens? And lord knows how the African-Americans were treated until 1965 with the Civil Voting Rights? In reality the Post WW2 with quick large gains for all citizens was a historical outlier and it ended in the dysfunctional 1970s and Reagan election in 1980 put a period on it. (Think of 1974 – 1982 as a Long Recession.)

In reality, the average person has to deal adversity and give up on the larger dreams. Both stories of Andrew and Rosa will become moderate successes and contributing members of society in their local cities. One does not need to go to Havard to be a success.

I find it odd that the writer chose two non-Rust Belt and non-rural examples here. Both states went HRC here and one was East LA! Neither area are struggling like West Virgina.

Holy Cats, now we are throwing darts over whose bubble is more legitimately real America?

For all the blather, this country remains the easiest place to slip between the greasy layers of the modern cultural slop sink.

For all the vaunted vibrancy of life in the Urban Enclaves, one can find just as insurmountable gaps across a few streets between the Urban Haves and HaveNots as they would be likely to find if they parachuted down into the middle of the so called FlyOverCountry.

As a pragmatist, I need to know how this all translates into policy. Do we finance moves to new towns? Do we restrict trade or subsidize industries? I think it is plain that we can’t revitalize towns that depended on manufactures, in part, because trade restrictions will not bring jobs back, only more automation and higher prices. How do you distribute wealth in a way that makes life meaningful?

I am a “Bubble Person” but in my role as an owner and director of manufacturing firms I’ve worked alongside many such workers. The choices made by Andrew and Rosa are to NOT avail themselves of the local top quality universities, many with scholarships for lower income working class kids, but rather to follow in their parents’ footsteps along what they feel is a safer, more predictable path. This decision for them is not one of leaving for better prospects, but staying and foregoing the risks and uncertain outcomes of university for the comforts, responsibilities and local ties of family, community and vocational college. I respect that choice, but I accept that I have some responsibilities as well toward these folks. Just as I benefited from major public investments and tax code incentives to help me into the Bubble Class, I need to help Rosa and Andrew make it into a viable and sustainable Working Class. That means I should be supporting broad employee ownership, responsible trade unions, higher minimum wages, and mandates on employers like me that require me to pay into a social safety net to support my employees instead of forcing them to accept government assistance. Our true “minimum wage” in this country is probably around $16 an hour. Many employers pay only the statutory minimum of $8 or so and let government pay the SNAP, heating assistance, health care and other costs that the employer can now legally avoid. Let’s recognize that a viable Working Class will only happen when employers recognize their responsibilities to compensate labor for its true costs.

“Many of our countrymen hold family, place, faith, and work as far more important than GDP, graduate degrees, LinkedIn connections, and 401Ks.”

There seems to be one misfit here in this otherwise sensible comparison. The 401k-ification of retirement planning is killing the retirement prospects of folks in the Back Row, whose parents more likely depended on defined-benefit pensions, and I’m not sure they aren’t concerned about that.

Having grown up on a farm in rural America and traveled through a great deal of it… I am quite happy to be away from it and living in a large, west coast city around all types of music, ethnic restaurants/culture, people who are highly talented, hard working and deep thinking…

So labor unions, a vilified concept for Trump voters and Republicans alike, helped lift working people out of the serf class for a little while. But workers in the US are so focused on Life Styles of the Rich and Famous, that instead of respecting labor, we blame the worker for all the ills today. Bring labor unions back and watch wages, benefits and quality of life go back up once again.

Dennis J. Tuchler says:How do you distribute wealth in a way that makes life meaningful?

Work on the two separately and accept both are needed. Wealth distribution and making life meaningful/convincing people their life is meaningful don’t seem terribly connected to me. Currently their seems to be a strong bipartisan effort to give life meaning by telling other people their life doesn’t have meaning.

Wezz says:Having grown up on a farm in rural America and traveled through a great deal of it… I am quite happy to be away from it and living in a large, west coast city […] am I doing something wrong?

Yes, luckily the penance is simple: stop being happy, refer to it as an urban hellscape that you have to live in for work, and start complaining about millennials, brunch, and virtue signaling.

Wezz says:
“I am quite happy to be away from it and living in a large, west coast city around all types of music, ethnic restaurants/culture, people who are highly talented, hard working and deep thinking…

…beautiful architecture, parks, summer festivals… good mass transit, easy access to supplies and tools for my work …am I doing something wrong?”
************
I wouldn’t think so. Everyone’s different. If it weren’t so, the world would be a boring place.
I guess the question is more about not being cut off from others who live a different lifestyle or are on a different economic level. And that can happen no matter where you live or how. We all experience some sort of “bubble.”
It’s funny, I saw that original Bubble Test a while back & even the test people must have been creating it from some kind of higher income level “bubble.” The restaurants they listed were the kind I always thought were for special occasions(Appleby’s, etc). If I remember,the test suggested those were more for folks with limited choices or budgets.Personally, I was thrilled to get an Appleby’s gift card for Christmas.
🙂

“Why should they leave? Isn’t staying to help family more valuable than going to Harvard?”

Wouldn’t these kids be much better able to help their families in the long term with a degree from Harvard? It’s not as though community college is free either; why not spend your money on the education with the greatest possible return?

People are finding meaning not only in Forgotten America but in other forgotten parts of the world as well.
Children’s surgeon Yuri Kozlov is an optimist who has a glass not empty, but just not yet filled. Returning from America, he rescues babies in the Russian outback near Lake Baikal. He says that in New York not all local doctors can do the same operations as in his children’s clinic in Irkutsk.
But, for example, when you visit a small American town of Denver in Colorado, you can see that the engines of modern pediatric surgery live and work there.
Steve Rothenberg lives in Denver. He created a grand department for newborns, which is now known all over the world.
Keith Georgeson, an American surgeon from Birmingham, Alabama, turned all child surgery. He literally quarreled with the surgeons who told him that it was impossible to operate small children with an endoscope. It is easier to find fame in a big city than in a small one, but if you were able to prove yourself in the provinces, then the world stars will come to you.
So Professor Alan Flake from the United States comes next summer to Irkutsk for the annual international congress “Stars of Pediatric Surgery.” He is the number one specialist in intrauterine surgery.
Dr. Kozlov says that he had the opportunity to stay in America, where he studied and worked. Invitations came to work in the capital cities. He explains that when, after Siberia, you find yourself in the conditions of the capital cities, it becomes difficult, uncomfortable. Other people live in the provinces – more honest and decent (I would add – naive, which of course is not bad).https://lenta.ru/articles/2017/11/29/hirurg/